Copyright Notice: This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Some place names included in The North Carolina Gazetteer contain terms that are considered offensive.
"The North Carolina Gazetteer is a geographical dictionary in which an attempt has been made to list all of the geographic features of the state in one alphabet. It is current, and it is historical as well. Many features and places that no longer exist are included; many towns and counties for which plans were made but which never materialized are also included. Some names appearing on old maps may have been imaginary, but many of them also appear in this gazetteer.
Each entry is located according to the county in which it is found. I have not felt obliged to keep entries uniform. The altitude of a place, the date of incorporation of a city or town, may appear in the beginning of one entry and at the end of another. Some entries may appear more complete than others. I have included whatever information I could find. If there is no comment on the origin or meaning of a name, it is because the information was not available. In some cases, however, resort to an unabridged dictionary may suggest the meaning of many names."
--From The North Carolina Gazetteer, 1st edition, preface by William S. Powell
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Back Marsh |
rises in N Duplin County and flows SW into Northeast Cape Fear River. |
| Back of Beyond |
name given to far western counties by Horace Kephart in Our Southern Highlanders (1913). Derived from longtime inaccessibility of region. |
| Back Sound |
between Shackleford Banks and Harkers Island in SE Carteret County. |
| Back Swamp |
rises in W Robeson County and flows SE into Lumber River in central Robeson County. |
| Back Swamp Township |
central Robeson County. |
| Backcountry |
term used during the early settlement and colonial period for the vast interior of North Carolina, located away from the coastline and including both the modern-day Piedmont and Mountain regions. |
| Bad Branch |
rises in E Macon County and flows SW into Big Creek. |
| Bad Creek |
rises in N Mitchell County and flows SE into Big Rock Creek. |
| Bad Fork |
rises in NW McDowell County on the N slopes of Woods Mountain and flows NE approx. 2 mi. into Armstrong Creek. |
| Bad Knob |
in N Mitchell County between Aaron Branch and Big Ridge. |
